Second Civil War
by Ben's Mom
Summary: This is a science fiction spin on themes from the Divergent trilogy. It was written by my 10-year old son, Ben.


Second Civil War (Divergent fanfiction)

By Ben

Part one: The Principal's Office

The next class is computer programming, my least favorite. The reason I dislike programming dates back to 10 years ago, when, during take your son to work day, I saw my father, Mike's cubicle. All the cramped, dirty, cubicle contained was a mind-reading helmet, glasses that act like a screen, and stimulant pills in case he had to stay overnight. As I walk by the biology classroom, I see people with quantum computers and microprinters, which probably means designing organisms. With farm-ology, I can barely describe in words how much I'd prefer to be going to that class than programming.

I wish that I was born into Amity, or Abnegation. In Amity, you can eat real food, instead of nutrition pills, and paint as entertainment, while in Abnegation, you to help the Factionless, the people who have been shunned from other factions. Even Dauntless's foolhardiness and aggression would be preferable compared to the Erudite's science-only curriculum, without even any humanities to water it down. I decide to talk to Ms. Melena, the computer programming teacher, in hopes of more humanities in the curriculum. It has not worked before, and saying it again may well be what the Erudite call "illogical", but there is no harm in asking, and reputation among the Erudite doesn't matter anymore due to the fact that the aptitude test is tomorrow, and the odds are 4 out of 5 that the result will be something other than Erudite. I snap out of my daydream because the Erudite consider fantasizing like that illogical, and even though the aptitude test, which determines my faction, career, and life is tomorrow, today I am still an Erudite, but at least today is the last day of this.

As I enter the room, I hear the beeping of the mind-reading helmets and the shrill noise of the quantum computers. As usual, the room is kept uncomfortably dry to prevent the helmets from shorting out. The room smells like air freshener, but that "fresh" smell doesn't hide the fact that the room hasn't been cleaned for a long time. Even if the air freshener smells like vanilla, it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Before I can talk to the teacher, however, Hayden, the star student this week whispers "I've heard rumors that Nui was jettisoned into space by the principal."

"Not all rumors are true, though."

I almost pass out, astonished that a rational person like Hayden would believe such rumors as I walk up to Ms. Melena and almost certain expulsion. Unlike the student's energy field desks, Ms. Melena has a cold, shiny Ultrasteel desk. Ms. Melena was fixing a broken mind-reading helmet when I disconnect a wire in the helmet intentionally and exclaim "You know, maybe in your own little world everyone in Erudite wants to become a computer programmer, but in the world everyone else lives in, there are professions other than computer programmer and scientist"

"You're right, Erudite does have a very science-focused curriculum."

She reinserts the wire, and then presses a blue button on the wall, a glass-like bubble encloses me, and a moment later I find myself in the principal's office.

I didn't have enough time to see the faces of the other students, but I expect they were laughing at my misfortune. I find myself gasping for breath and scream "Are you trying to kill me? Because if you don't stop, I'll die from vacuum whether you like it or not!"

I hear through the loudspeaker "There have been some issues with the sealing in these areas. You may experience dizziness, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, or faintness. Sorry for the inconvenience." The principal hands me a mask attached to a tank labeled "air for humans" I feel trepidatious about the air at first, worried that its poison gas, but I realize that it's that or certain death through vacuum. When I do muster the courage to wear the mask, unlike my worst fears, I find myself able to breathe again. I notice that even though I'd probably be dead by now if not for the mask, the principal is alive and not wearing a mask.

I consider the fact that becoming a principal is almost as difficult as being leader of a whole faction, you have to get 100% on the knowledge test and score in the top 1% in the BPQ test. Mr. Whitten, the principal, however, got 130% on the knowledge test by answering extra credit questions and for the BPQ test, they simply said "This is a record high, the equivalent of an IQ of 180."

The principal's hands are vibrating, not a tremble, but a whirring that you'd expect more out of a machine than a living, breathing human being. His hands look unnatural, even when they're not vibrating. The skin looks stretched to the breaking point in some areas, while in others, it is shriveled up like fruit that has spent one day too long in the refrigerator. Veins stick out of his hands like wires, and his skin looks unusually red and transparent. Through his rubbery skin, I see something silver, not metallic silver, but a dull, grey silver. This is either cosmetic surgery gone terribly wrong, or worse.

He asks Ms. Melena through the intercom why I was sent here, and once she explains the situation, he tells me "I remember you being sent here before under similar circumstances, Jackson. I would have thought you would have learned by now that this argument will not work."

I feel him getting ready to say his normal argument about how what I'm doing is illogical, but instead he screams "This is completely illogi1ca0l1010101010000101011100100101010011011010101001!"

Wondering if he just took HallucinoTox, I shout reflexively "I'm telecalling the insane line!"

Before I'm able to actually call the insane line, he opens a drawer and pulls out a black box with the word "truth" printed on it. Mr. Whitten removes a needle containing a deep violet serum from the box, flips the switch activating the serum, and injects me with whatever is in the needle. Almost instantly, I feel an overwhelming urge to tell everything about me and say "I have been planning to switch to Amity for a long time"

After I make my confession, he flips the switch back to its starting position, and the urge fades away. I realize the mistake I made. What I did was careless, and although being exposed involuntarily, like with the truth serum, felt like being stripped naked, I realize that I got off lucky. My brother, Tam, made a similar mistake, but that time, it cost him his life. He was asked to participate in a study at age 13 to see if adding a new ingredient to the simulation serum would decrease the chance of permanent paralysis from the serum, but it turned out to be death serum. The picture of Tam's body flashes back to me, his face devoid of emotion, the green tendrils of the poison wrapping around him like a claw, squeezing every bit of life out of him.

I blink back tears, knowing that not doing so would only start another argument, and right now I am walking on thin ice, one wrong step could get me jettisoned into space. In an attempt to avoid any other penalties, I tell her "I agree, what I did was illogical, but jettisoning someone out into space is also illogical. Who knows, I could be the next Albert Einstein."

"Einstein actually listened to his teachers and got passing grades, but you do the exact opposite."

"Albert Einstein didn't even learn to talk until he was 3"

"Performance at such an early age is one thing, but by now, grades are a fairly good indicator"

"You are expelled!"

While I'm still processing the implications of this, he presses the blue button that I've begun to associate with teleportation.

Part two: The Hallucination

Expecting to find myself in vacuum, or in a room full of poison gas, I am shocked but relived when I find myself back home. The first thing that comes to my mind is that maybe whatever vile substance I'm really breathing is already getting to my brain, making me hallucinate, but I push that thought from my mind and decide to ask my mother, Rachel, if she has been informed of the situation. Even though this isn't Candor, it's no use building up a reputation among the Erudite as a liar, and even if I had decided to withhold the information, the principal would almost certainly contact my parents. Rachel, clearly hearing the teleporter, asks "Why have you arrived so early, and why by teleporter?"

After I explain the situation, she says in a sugary tone "Don't worry, everything will be all right."

Immediately recognizing that as a lie, I decide to think about something even more important, the aptitude test. I decide not to talk to Rachel, all I'll get out of her is baby talk, so I decide to consider the positive and negative aspects of each faction myself. Erudite is certainly out of the question, they could jettison me at any moment, but what about the other four factions? The Dauntless are brave, but aggressive, the Candor are honest but tactless, the Amity are peaceful but passive, while the Abnegation are selfless, but overly so. In the same tone, Rachel asks "Would you like something to eat?"

Saying no would result in the only thing worse than a white lie, an argument, so solely out of politeness, I say yes. Moments later, part of the ceiling disappears, and nutrition pills land unceremoniously on the table. The pills taste unusually sweet and have an orange tint to them as opposed to the normal white. A few seconds later, I suddenly start to feel sleepy and my vision blurs. Through the sedative, I hear Rachel say as if she were talking to a baby "Would you like to sleep?"

Unable to resist the knockout drug, I say yes, and right after I say that, everything goes black.

When I swim back into consciousness, I find myself in a white room containing a man peering over box with countless knobs, a mask attached by tube to an ominous-looking tank, and another tube jutting out of the floor with a hypodermic needle at the end. The man introduces himself as Mark, and asks me to sit down in the chair. He attaches the mask to my face, and I feel the Ultradhesive secure the mask to my face. When I ask about what he's doing to me, all he does is press a button on the black box and I find that I can't move a single muscle. Mark inserts the needle into my arm. Even if I'm failing the classes, I at least listened enough to know what that sort of needle does, it sends nanotechnology up to my brain to read the brain waves and send the data back to some large mainframe. Almost instantly, I feel a searing pain shoot up my body, as if the needle contains some sort of acid. The pain begins to fade as I feel this world slip away and be replaced by another world.

I try wiggling my fingers, and instead of pressing against restraints, they actually move. I find myself in outer space, but luckily with a spacesuit on and an ion pulse cannon in my hand. I see a spaceship approaching with green and black stripes, the symbol of the Dauntless in the Dauntless Wars, where the Dauntless attempted to take over the other four factions, Erudite, Candor, Abnegation, and Amity. The Erudite eventually foiled the Dauntless's plans by sending nanotechnology to break through the seal in the Dauntless's spaceships, thus exposing everyone aboard to vacuum. For those in spacesuits, that was just one more seal to pierce. I quickly notice that the ship's target is not me, it's the Erudite living capsule. I hear the mysterious ship say in a robotic voice through the intercom "State your purpose or you will be fired upon."

"Wouldn't it be better to try to maintain peaceful relations with the Erudite rather than risking losing all of your armada in a battle where the odds of winning are 1 to 5, if that?"

I realize that I made a terrible mistake when the ship responds "Okay, you asked for it, prepare to be destroyed."

As the guns start charging up, I think of something. Since it is never a good idea to use unnecessary violence, maybe I could find a way to disable their weapons systems without actually harming the crew. That's when I see it, a purple patch on the bottom of the ship that just screams antimatter collector. I'll have to be careful when I'm preparing to destroy the collector, globs of antimatter are being attracted to the ship's collector every second, and if I get hit by the antimatter, there will be an explosion that will turn me, the ship, and the living capsule into space dust. Planning is important, but every second I lose is one step closer to the ship having enough antimatter to fire its weapons, so I gather my courage, aim, and fire.

The effects are instantaneous, the collector fades from purple to grey to black, and those antimatter globules that you can't see but you somehow know where they are stop moving towards the collector and hang there, floating in space for who knows how long. I have very little time to think about that, however, because I find myself back in the room with that mysterious man who injected nanotechnology into me to read my brain waves while I was hallucinating from the gas he gave me. Secretly hoping he might also tell me what he was doing to me with the hallucination, I say "I know you won't tell me what you did to me with the hallucinogenic gas, but when will the aptitude test be?"

"That was the aptitude test. I injected the nanotech into you to monitor your responses while you were under the gas."

Part three: Steak Tartare

Stunned, I say "Which faction do I belong in, then?"

"The test results point to Amity. Abnegation would be trying to repair the ship because if you look closely, you'd see air escaping through a small hole in the ship. Volunteering to tell how you arrived would mean Candor, attacking the ship would be a Dauntless attribute, while asking for more details would show up as Erudite."

Before I have a chance to ask any more questions, though, he activates the teleporter and I soon find myself right in front of the Amity compound. The first thing I notice are the surroundings, I see trees and the smell of freshly cut grass hangs in the air, and one quick glance shows you that the trees aren't artificial, like the ones in the Erudite compound, nor did the scent come out of a can. After waiting for what seems like hours, an old women walks up and introduces herself as Deborah Cunningham, leader of Amity. Before I'm able to speak, she says "Welcome to planet Earth."

I am taken aback by that simple statement more than any sentence has before in my entire life. I've heard rumors that the Amity lived on a planet as opposed to a living capsule, but even if those rumors were true, I never even dreamed that it would be planet Earth, since there are other planets out there that are far superior. "First, let's take a walk."

Deborah leads me through the forest, occasionally saying something like "When the other factions gave us earth to ourselves, our first step was to put things back in balance. We destroyed all traces of civilization and started a new, more balanced world. We have decided to call it the Great Purification to please the gods."

Occasionally, I see burnt bits of buildings from before everything on Earth was burnt to the ground, or the Great Purification, as the Deborah considers it. She takes me to what I guess is a cafeteria, but it's hard to see that with all the dirt, insects, and mold. Deborah takes me to an especially dirty table and soon I find someone serving me a dish called steak tartare which, even though it sounds like some fancy meal, is just a hunk of raw meat with an uncooked egg on top. I wonder what the Amity are thinking, knowingly consuming something that can endanger their basic health and safety just because it tastes slightly better than a much safer version. Without me even asking about the steak tartare, Deborah walks up to me and says "Don't worry, the steak tartare may seem dangerous, but in reality, there's definitely an element of risk to it, but the risk is so small that it's almost negligible."

"You know why it seems dangerous, because it is dangerous!"

"Ready the knockout herbs."

In response to what she said, three muscular men exit the room and produce some herbs with a light pink tint to them. They hand over the herbs to Deborah and then she presses them on my skin. I soon feel a cold fluid begin to seep into my veins from the leaf, and almost instantly, the world begins to swim before my eyes. Through the haze of the sedative, I notice people minding their own business, eating the steak tartare on the dirty tables as I crumple to the floor and pass out.

I wake up in a ultrasteel-clad, musty smelling room that I assume is a jail cell. First, I decide to look in the mirror to make sure that I'm not under the influence of the herbs anymore. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a fair skinned, dark haired little boy, not the large young man I always expect to see, even though I am sixteen. Mirrors have earned a reputation as the forbidden fruit, since the Erudite consider looking in a mirror when you can just have the robobeautifier do the work for you illogical. Since I don't see the telltale blue-green stripes that show that I'm under a serum, I look out the window to see where we are. When I look through the window, I see Earth, or what was Earth, now it's a frozen wasteland, and I just manage to see the Amity compound through the cloudless skies and a lake of liquid air.

I've heard of terraforming, but it hadn't occurred to me that they could do it the other way around. It makes sense, though, the same technology that would be used to make an uncomfortably hot planet habitable could also in theory be used to make Earth frigid. Before I have a chance to think about anything else, however, I hear a robotic voice say "You have been captured by the Dauntless battle cruiser Oblivion and will be given to the Erudite for scientific purposes. We will put you in cryo-storage for the warp in one minute."

Unlike the last few hours, which seemed like days, with nothing to think about, that minute whizzes by and before I know it, I hear the warning "We will put you in cryo-storage in 5…4…3…2…1…0" At zero, everything goes black.

Part four: The Anomaly

When I regain consciousness, I find myself in what I recognize as the human experiments section of the Erudite laboratory. Through the corner of my eye, I notice a science bot come up to me and tell me in an emotionless voice "I expect you are pretty confused right now. Although this does not cover everything that happened, here's the main sequence of events. First, the Dauntless captured all the Erudite-born initiates and then rendered Earth uninhabitable, thus murdering everyone else in Amity. After they had put everyone in cryo-storage, robots injected the prisoners with detonation serum and then gave them to us with the intent of destroying Erudite with human bombs. By the time we had extracted the serum and placed it in the EMP chamber, there were only two minutes left out of the 48 hours we had when you arrived. The reason we didn't euthanize you like the other initiates is that you have a special genetic anomaly that allows you to become serum and toxin resistant, if we activate it with a pulse from the Eesathu machine. As for a general update on the second Dauntless war, this has been bubbling up for a while. The reason that we have to do a sneak attack is that the Dauntless military is much stronger than ours."

Before I have time to process all this information, I find myself following the medical bot to the Eesathu pulse machine, which I arrive at quickly. The Eesathu device says in a loud, booming voice "Please put on the anesthesia mask."

Knowing that it's either that or being jettisoned, I put on the mask, and the world slips away. When the world goes back into focus, I find myself in a room that's clearly top secret due to all the alarm tripwires, death serum sprayers, and a gigantic mind-scan device. Through the communication device that I had implanted into me at age one, I hear the voice of the military leader say "Now that you have the serum resistance, you have been selected for a top-secret mission involving sneaking to the Dauntless control room undetected, activating the self-destruct mechanism, and escaping before the timer runs out."

"We will activate the teleporter in 5…4…3…2…1…0"

Part five: The Button:

Just as I hear the word zero, I find myself in a white, brightly lit hallway with a heavily armored forcesuit on and a map and instruction chip in the viewer of the forcesuit. Before I have a chance to observe my surroundings further, however, a purple mist fills the air and the poison gas alarm kicks on in my suit, which I silence, due to the fact that the anomaly has been activated. Through the x-ray viewer, I see that the control room has sprayers, but unlike the death serum sprayers, there are torches next to the sprayers. I also notice that they are connected to a tank labeled "fuel", which can only mean one thing, the room is a death trap. If I do enter the room, I will be burnt to a crisp by an incinerator built in to the control room. That's when I see it, a blue button on the door that, according to the instruction viewer, will allow me to enter without activating the flames.

Even though I've found out how to enter without getting incinerated, the door still remains locked. Luckily, the room is a weapons room and with no trouble, I find a 9,000,000O torch and use it to open the door, setting off an alarm. An armada of security drones come to my attention, and just as I think I'm doomed, I remember the KelvinatorTM torch in my hand. I fire at one, and then another, and keep seeing them turn into blobs of superheated plasma, which are turned back to a piles of Ultranium by the emergency anti-vaporization mechanism.

Once the army of robots is taken care of, I enter the control room. The first thing I notice when I enter the control room is the continuous sound of the intercom, alarms, and quantum computers. What steals my attention next, however, is a red sign saying that you should type "sdestruct/base/all/nosave/" in the command center to activate the self-destruct mechanism. After contemplating, I type the command. The effects are instantaneous, the red siren labeled "self-destruct" turns on, filling my ears with an ear-piercing, shrill sound, and I hear the antimatter-matter collision device charging up. The forcesuit tells me to type next "lifeship/readynow/roomid==cmd1685/speedpri/" in the console to ready a lifeship.

After typing the command, I enter the ship, aided by the suit's instructions. I hear the ship say in a robotic voice "Would you like to activate autopilot, or would you like to pilot yourself." Afraid that the Dauntless might intercept the signal of the autopilot system and send a ship to eliminate me, I choose to pilot myself. Now is the only time I'm grateful that I wasn't raised to be some technophobic, Amity-born hippy, attending one of their "Waldorf" schools where they don't use any sort of technology, learning nothing but humanities and how to mollify yourself and others. In Erudite, you learn basic piloting skills at age 8, which, although it seems extremely early, is nothing compared to the Dauntless, who start at 5.

Almost instantly, all those years of piloting training come back to me, and I soon start piloting the ship as if it was my own body, dodging asteroids and stopping occasionally to prevent overheating. Through the BackViewTM screen, I see a ship approaching with the Dauntless symbol, an X with a dot in the center, and the telltale red-orange warning light that signifies an attack. I'm greeted with an unpleasant surprise when the forcesuit I still have on informs me that the ship I'm piloting is unarmed except for exploration nanotech and non-lethal hypno guns for personal combat.

Then, an idea crosses my mind. First, I type in the command "hypnoweap/prsnl/onshp/sizefind/" to make sure that there are hypno guns small enough, and after confirming, I tell the system to fit half of the nanotechnology with hypno rays, and program the hypno beams to induce suicide. I tell the nanotech to board the ship through the antimatter collector and unleash the hypno rays. Quickly, I see a greyish dust enter the collector, which I assume is the nanotech, and through the corner of my eye, I see the ship run into an asteroid. Soon though, I feel an unbearable urge to do the same, and the forcesuit informs me that I was hit with the hypno beam, and the suit injects me with nanotechnology that I assume will help me fight the hypnosis until I recover. Almost instantly, I feel myself return to normal, and I pilot the ship the rest of the way to Erudite undisturbed.

Part six: The Revolution:

After hours of piloting, I see a dot in the distance that grows until I can recognize it as the Erudite living capsule. When the ship engages docking, I see through the SightHoleTM someone unexpected. Instead of the welcome drone I had planned, an anthropomorphic robot with a force bubble opens the airlock and tells me to hang on to his back with the threat of a pain-inducing serum injection if I disobey.

When I do so, he puts another bubble around us both that I recognize as an invisibility cloak. Then I hear the roaring of the jetpack, and smell the sweetish odor produced by a soundproof field. Trying to seem very discrete, he opens a heavily armored door, and enters a room that I know to be an interrogation room, where a drone puts a mind-scan device on both of us. , I feel a pulse through my body and that feeling of "butterflies in my stomach", but not for long, because the mind-scan shell opens and the drone informs me that we passed the mind-scan test.

He opens another door, and I find myself in a large room that is clearly just an apartment building minus the walls. As I enter, I'm greeted with a large group of people, who clearly are rebels due to the force fields and IDs that are meant to be hidden, but sadly the person who implanted the identification chip did a poor job of making it secret. Before I have a chance to ask questions, however, the robot who took me to this strange place speaks up and tells me "First of all, this is the NEC or Neo-Erudite Committee. As for my role in this gig, I'm the head of this operation and you may know me as Mr. Whitten."

Those words alone make me nearly jump out of my skin. The principal, who I trusted except for that last day, really some weird anarchist cyborg? Before I'm able to contemplate further, however, Mr. Whitten says "NEC is an uprising dedicated to a total reform of Erudite. The reason I started speaking in binary suddenly is that a side effect of my extremely high intelligence is that whenever I have extreme emotions, I start speaking in gibberish. NEC tech experts added extra modules, which helped, but I still have to avoid any extreme emotion when I have to hide my true identity." I scream "I'm reporting you all!"

"Would it sway you if I informed you that the Erudite intentionally murdered Tam?"

Those words make my heart drop into my stomach. The Erudite, my birth faction, killed my brother? "Why?" I ask. Mr. Whitten says "They suspected he had an aptitude for Dauntless, and like you, he had the anomaly, so they couldn't afford to give the Dauntless, Erudite's enemy, any extra military might" I decide that the NEC is the lesser of two evils. There may be some things that NEC does that is not the best thing, but Erudite is much, much, worse. I ask "What's my part in this?"

"Due to your skill and courage in the destruction of Dauntless, and the anomaly, you have been selected for a top-secret mission involving sneaking to the control room and then killing the leader with death serum. After the leader is dead, you'll escort Mr. Whitten to the control room, where he'll hack the system to make himself leader."

"What if I get caught?"

"The chances of being killed in the assassination are about 2%, while the chances of us leaving you to your own devices if you fail are 100%. We can't afford to feed you for nothing."

Although I avoided the idea of assassination before, I'm still open to reason, so I agree. , a skinny, middle-aged man in a light Ultranium chestplate who I recognize as the test administrator says "First, though, we will need to give you the proper equipment. After all, an assassin is only as good as his gear. Only use the pistol in emergencies. The death serum is for the actual assassination. As soon as you enter the forcesuit, it will give you the map through training transfer."

He hands me a hermetically sealed, heavily armored forcesuit, an invisibility cloak, an antimatter pistol, and a tank of pressurized aerosol death serum. Almost reflexively, I put on the suit, knowing intuitively which tabs go where, where each wire goes, and all those other things that require hours of memorization to learn, at least properly. I find myself mindlessly exiting the room and following the suit's instructions to get to the command room, but that's cut short when I see two drones near the control room that are surely AEGIS mammoth class, the highest class of drones there are.

As the drones red targeting lasers lock on, I think of something. On the belly side of the drones, there's a red button that could be a trap, but it's my only way out. My pistol was made with an emphasis on ease of use as opposed to strength, so it will do nothing against these heavy fighter drones. After contemplating, I turn on the cloak, and walk tentatively up to the drones, where I press the button. At first, nothing happens, but I notice the drones grey armor start to glow. the faint red-orange glow turns to a bright yellow one, and I notice the weapons fade from purple, which signifies that it's ready to fire, to a dull, lifeless black. Through the roar of the drones, I hear a robot say through the loudspeaker "Warning: drones have been ordered to self-destruct. Please exit the area."

Knowing that that applies to me too, I run for my life. After running, I see in the distance the blue-hot drones shed their armor plates and release gobs of molten metal, which expands into a great ball of fire which I can feel the heat of even from here. A long way off, I see another object, rapidly approaching, that grows into the shape of the principal, in the form of a robot. He informs me "The way to the control room is blocked. I'll have to teleport you there."

I see that familiar blue bubble enclosing me and less than a second later, I find myself in a room filled with the constant drone of monitors, sirens, and quantum computers that I assume is the control room.

When I come back to my senses, I realize that instead of a leader operating the controls, I see some sort of brain incubator guarded with poison dart turrets. Given the heavy armament, I assume that it's the leader's brain. Clearly, the NEC had prepared for an unarmed man operating controls, not a brain with a bunch of tubes connected. Although the case is heavily armed and armored, I do see one weakness, a nutrient refill port with a special slot for aerosols, a perfect place to put the death serum. Noticing a platoon of guards that are clearly armed to the teeth, I insert the can of poison gas.

At first, nothing happens, but I notice the guards moving stiffly, as if their bodies were slowly turning to ultranium. They stop moving altogether and fall, cracking their armor and killing the soldiers inside, if they hadn't been dead already. Also, I notice the screens in the control room go blank, except for one glowing red button saying "Change leader"

Then, I see another thing, a faint 3-D projection of the principal as a robot that becomes more and opaque until I actually touch him to prove that he's really here as opposed to a projection. I don't have any time to talk, however, due to the fact that he presses the red button and starts sending electrical impulses through holes that appear to open upon his command. The next thing that happens almost makes me pass out. The screen lights up with a window saying "New Leader = Mr. Whitten"

An ultranium shell encloses Mr. Whitten. I see the machines whir back to life, and through the intercom, I hear Mr. Whitten's voice say "That was close. Even I, with my extreme intelligence, didn't realize the extent of which the leader's control had spread. It's lucky that I arrived when I did, or else, without the leader operating the basic systems, the life support systems would have failed and we would have all succumbed to vacuum. That's also why the guard's armor shut down."

After waiting for what seems like days, I see a drone come up to me and say "You have been granted the Tag for Courage and Strength. Prepare to have nanotech implant the tag." I feel a searing pain through my left leg, but it only lasts for a second before it fades away and I see a thin grey film of nanotechnology settle to the floor.

I see that familiar blue bubble and before it completely registers, I find myself in a large, brightly lit room with my whole family, along with some other people I know nothing of. Before I have time to process my surroundings further, however, I hear a booming voice say through an ancient device called a loudspeaker "Now that you have been given the implanted tag for proof that you've actually gotten the award, now we will present to Jackson"

The crowd cheers in anticipation "The ribbon for bravery and power!"

A robotic claw materializes out of thin air and places a green ribbon in my hand that is attached to a piece of crystal-clear hyperdiamond with a handheld tesla gun and the words "For Jackson's bravery and prowess in the Second Dauntless Wars and the NEC revolution" engraved into the diamond. Although I'd expect them to be smiling at their own child making such of an achievement, they, especially Rachel, look dismayed.

Wondering if they had been drugged while I was away, I scream through the intercom at Mr. Whitten "What have you done to them! Before I left, they wanted a normal, successful, adult, but now, it appears that they want me to regress to being a passive baby again!" Mr. Whitten informs me "It's more something we un-did to them. The old government saw the revolution coming, so they hypnotized Rachel to murder you. With emergency anti-hypno rays, we made it so that she only knocked you out instead of giving you a poison pill, as the government had intended. Even with the anti-hypno technology, your parents still had a drive to kill you, so we snuck them some anti-hypnosis pills. Those fixed the problem, but a side effect of the anti-hypno serum is becoming overly peaceful and overly protective towards children.

You will now be going to the computer programming academy instead of the Erudite general school."

"Programming was my least favorite subject, so why the computer programming academy?"

"The Eesathu pulse device says otherwise. It appears that the approach they were using made it at least bearable for people who were not talented with computers, but in addition, people like you with a gift for computers begin to truly loathe programming. You will be teleported home in 5…4…3…2…1…"

When I hear the word "zero", I see that familiar blue bubble, and almost instantly, I find myself back home. The silence is broken, however, by Rachel and my father, Mike, being teleported here with me. Expecting them to congratulate me, I nearly pass out when they tell me "You're not going to the Erudite general school. You're not going to the computer programming academy. You're going to the therapeutic school! You must be psychotic, murdering trillions of innocent people without thinking twice!"

"The Dauntless were planning on destroying Erudite! Without me, Erudite would be gone, closely followed by the death of all the other factions. Then, with only the Dauntless left, their food reserves would eventually be depleted, and they, too, would die off. Then, space would be barren, devoid of sentient life."

"You're going to the computer programming academy, not the therapeutic school, but if you try any more stunts like that, we will get you put under permanent sedation for the safety of everyone!"

Before they have a chance to threaten me further, a voice says "Teleporting to programming academy"

Part seven: Neo-Erudite (20 years later):

I hear the whir of the mind-reading helmet, turning impulses in my brain into lines of code on the screen. Occasionally, I think back to the days of the second Dauntless wars, back to year 98,127,349, and then the NEC revolution, where it took years for the nanotech to rebuild the damage, and even longer for Earth to be re-terraformed and re-populated after the Dauntless attack. I realize that I have to snap out of my daydream, due to the fact that there's a deadline coming up for a new release of AutoSurgeon software.

I put on the helmet and watch it decode my thoughts into code. If there was one thing I'm the most grateful for, it would be going to the programming academy, because otherwise, who knows what would have happened. I could have ended up one of those people who stands by the side of the zoomway and makes money using a collector beam to take valuables, or worse, I could be deemed dead weight and therefore be jettisoned into the vacuum of space.


End file.
